Conation

//kəʊˈneɪ.ʃən// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The power or act which directs or impels to effort of any kind, whether muscular or psychical. countable, uncountable

    "Any pleasing sense-experience, when it has once taken place, will, on subsequent occasions, give rise to a conation, when its conditions are only partially repeated..."

Example

More examples

"Any pleasing sense-experience, when it has once taken place, will, on subsequent occasions, give rise to a conation, when its conditions are only partially repeated..."

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin cōnātiō (“an act of attempting”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.